Darn Car!

The Story So Far:

• Thursday, April 12th: my 1994 Eagle Vision, which heretofore had no problems at all in the two years I've owned it, stalled out at several red lights and didn't want to start again. Eventually someone pushed it into a gas station, and I had it towed to my mechanic. The tow truck guy noticed a leak under my car, which I mentioned to the mechanic.
  
• Friday, April 13th: I got the car back a little after 5 PM. $585.64 bought me new battery terminals, fuel filter, fuel pump and tow.
• Sunday, April 22nd: the car started doing the same darn thing again. A cop pushed the stalled car into a (different) gas station. When evening came, we tried to drive it to the garage, but their lot was blocked off for a fresh surfacing with tar.
• Monday, April 23rd: I dropped off the car in the cool of the morning, and took the bus to work.
• Tuesday, April 24th: got the car back. It had been overheating, in part because a regulator had failed on one of the engine's fans so that it wasn't turning on. They plugged one coolant leak and filled it up, but warned me that more leaks would follow, and they didn't like all that "play" on the steering wheel. The bill this time: another $135. I had Worldwide Travel (my former employer) rent me a car for my drive to Phoenix on Monday the 30th.
• Friday, April 27th: the car did not stall out, but it was on the edge of overheating in the stop and go traffic on Speedway as I drove back from making John's car payment. I changed the car reservation from an airport pickup and one day rental to an in-town pickup and a two-day rental. The engine later got hot even on a brief drive to Safeway after dark.
• Sunday, April 29th: the car overheated yet again, but did not stall out, as I drove back from church. I pulled into Hanson's for gas, opened the hood, and saw lots of green fluid pooling on the engine block and the ground below.

Now, here's my plan:

• I'm scheduled to work until noon and then take the rest of the day off for my trip to Phoenix (technically, Scottsdale). So I'll drive to work and hope the car makes it. Or maybe I'll just drop the car off and take the bus. I'll have to see whether the car is willing to go the three milees to work!
• When I leave work I'll go directly to the garage and drop off the car, unless I've done that already. Then I'll eat lunch, and go to Enterprise and get the rental.
• Once I have the rental I'll go home, check my email, goof off for a bit, and drive to Scottsdale. On the way I'll probably dig up an In-N-Out Burger, because
  
• 
  
• ...my next stop is the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, where John Scalzi is doing a reading and a signing.
  
• To my mild shame, I haven't actually read any of his novels yet, just a short story, some Ficlets and lots and lots of his online non-fiction, some of it in book form. But the way my schedule for Monday is set up, I'll probably put a dent in Old Man's War while I'm waiting. Military sf really isn't my subgenre, but I sampled the first page of The Android's Dream once, and that appealed to me even less. I know from his other work that he's a darn good writer, though, so perhaps it's time to give his novels a chance.
  

I guess my Doctor Who musings will have to wait for another night. I got a nice long nap today on the couch while John tore out more of the moldy bathroom - but I still need to go the heck to bed!


Karen

Blogging and taxes - and a pipe organ

Unbelievable. After over two years of not missing a single night in blogging, either here or at my old blog, Musings from Mâvarin (I don't count the night in New Mexico a year ago, when I did battle with the phone line all night, and finally managed to post at dawn), I just plain forgot to post a blog entry last night.

I was doing taxes on the older laptop, because there was no way to load the software on the newer one. This meant copying things onto that external hard drive I bought recently, shutting down, plugging everything into the old laptop, loading TurboTax, and, because I needed to print something, installing the software for my printer-scanner as well. When, after all that, I was stuck for a vehicle registration, I just went to bed. Unbelievable, I say again. I must have been very tired.

A nice email turned up this morning from an organist at Organ Stop Pizza, where I celebrated my birthday last month.

Hi, Karen,

I work at The Organ Stop and the organist that played all the songs for you is Charlie Balogh. The Beer Barrel Polka and Star Wars gave it away. Charlie always plays those songs.

Just to let you know. The organ has 6000 pipes. Biggest organ yet that I've gotten to play. It is an honor not only to work at the Organ Stop but also with Charlie. He definitely is one-of-a-kind.

Now, Ironically enough I was there that night you were there. We (the Valley Of The Sun, organ society and staff) just upgraded the organ itself this weekend. We put all neon stop tabs (the tabs that go around the keys ) so that they will "glow" with the black light.

We really do hope you had a happy birthday, even if Charlie DID add 9 years to you.

Please, come back and visit soon!

John Baker
Organist
Organ Stop Pizza.

Why, yes I did have a good time! Thanks!

Karen

P.S. Hey! Organ Stop has a Wikipedia entry! (Why am I surprised?)

To the Point

As I mentioned last night, our last sightseeing of the "Big Five-Oh" trip, if you don't count IKEA, was a visit to a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Spire in Scottsdale, AZ. It was part of Wright's proposed 1957 design for the Arizona State Capitol, along with some shorter spires and other features that were too outre for lawmakers of the era. It was finally built all by itself in 2004 at the corner of Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard and Scottsdale Road, at the edge of The Promenade Mall. It weighs more than 75,000 pounds, according to the Roadside America tip about it, and is assembled with about 1,700 individual pieces of steel.

Yeah, well. The point is that it's this historic thing, designed by the best-known architect since Charles Eiffel; and yet it exists basically as a big turquoise-colored curiosity at the edge of a shopping mall.


But I got out of the car and walked over for a closer look and some better photos. Right away I came upon a big canvas-covered fence behind which the spire was apparently barricaded. The sign on the fence proclaimed the creation of a Frank Lloyd Wright Commemorative Park, to be opened in Spring, 2007. Peeking through the tears in the canvas told me two things: 1) they've barely started doing anything with that little block of land, and 2) the spire was not actually in the barricaded area. I walked on.


I'm glad I did! There already is a park covering perhaps a quarter acre around the spire. This bear sculpture is one of quite a few animal statues found in there, along with javalinas, a coyote and several bunnies. Real desert plants, including this youngish saguaro (perhaps 75 years old) and firecracker bushes, add natural elements to the landscaping.


According to our tour guide at Taliesin West yesterday, Wright liked the idea of a ship design in the desert. The spire and its surroundings seem to reflect this interest. Doesn't this water feature remind you of the prow of a ship? The bricks that box it in are the same kind John and I see around Tucson all the time, and want to incorporate into our house. And the water here attracts a natural, albeit ephemeral, element to this little park. Do you see what I'm talking about?


It's a whole flock of grackles, here to take advantage of the cool water on an unusually hot March day.

***

Now that I'm home again, I need to get on with a number of things, like packing stuff from my office into boxes, and getting on with diet and exercise, and updating a resume or two. I'm getting to the point where I can't put off such things much longer. After all, I said I was giving up avoidance for Lent!

To that end, I copied some leads off a Writer's Digest online article tonight. It was about 23 literary agencies currently accepting new clients. Of those, I found three that represent the magic combination fantasy/science fiction/young adult, and that didn't, to the best of my memory, reject a previous query years ago. If I don't announce by the end of the week that I've written at least a first draft of a query to one or more of these agents, you have my permission to start nagging me.

Karen

Home

First off, here's the Monday Photo Shoot:

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Post any winter photos you didn't get around to posting earlier. Because winter is going, going, gone, baby. Think of it as a last salute.

I can do that.

This isn't snow. It's rain. I think so, anyway. I have no particular memory of taking the photo, but it dates from January 31st.

On to more interesting sights:

So today we did go to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home, studio and architectural school from the late 1930s until his death in the 1950s. I'd been there once before, briefly, meeting my online friend Sarah for the first time. Today, though, I actually went on one of the tours.



John and I opted for the 90-minute Insights tour, because it included a few living quarters interiors. I liked the lack of box shapes, inside and out, but overall, there wasn't much that we thought would be relevant to our own needs and tastes. For example, these two beds above, separated by a low wall, were Frank Lloyd Wright's "Do not disturb" bed (left) and his OK to disturb bed (right). If he was in the left one, which was farther from the building's entrance, it meant he was catching up on sleep after a marathon creative session, and should not be awakened unless someone really important needed to see him urgently. I wish I could get away with that! But the beds themselves are just little cots.



And here, steps away, is part of FLW's bathroom. At one time I wanted to go for an industrial modern look for my own bathroom, sort of space ship style, with lots of gleaming metal offset by blue. But it's not going to happen.


After Taliesin we found our way to the Spire FLW designed for the Arizona state house. When it was finally built a couple of years ago, it went up at the corner of Scottsdale Road and Frank Lloyd Wright Drive, in front of an Italian restaurant. More on this tomorrow night.

From there we made our way back to IKEA. John measured his car trunk and back seat with twine, and decided that the desk I liked (Mikael in "beech effect") would fit in there, barely. So we bought it, and drove home.

Now I have to pack up much of this room, throw away what I can and move the rest out so that we can put the new desk in and make other improvements. The ucky orange carpeting will go away, and the unusable closet doors, and foam where unfinished walls meet the unfinished ceiling.

But not tonight!

Karen

A Dream of Trains

We're going north: not far, not all the way to the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley, but north. The plan is to seek out some of the weird or historic Phoenix area sights such as the ones I mentioned last night, and then take the Verde Canyon train ride.



I think the Civil War reenactment is at Picacho Peak on my birthday, and Picacho Peak is on the way to Phoenix. That's the weird-looking mountain in the photos above from last weekend. This was the site of the only Civil War battle in Arizona Territory, the westernmost battle of that war. Here's a better photo of Picacho Peak at sunset, taken on one of my trips to Phoenix last May:

This is about the time of year when Picacho is supposed to be full of wildflowers, in years when it rained the right amount at the right time over the winter. I don't know whether January's snow helps or hurts that cause. I'm not a big fan of flowers, anyway, just curious. To be honest, I'm more interested in Rooster Cogburn's Ostrich Farm, a few miles south of Picacho Peak.


March is also supposed to be a good time to see baby eaglets in Verde Canyon. Now where did we put those binoculars?

Karen

Hurry Up and Wait; Time for a Tiki Tour?

So, following up on the web-related workshops I attended at the Ministry Fair last weekend, I finally secured a domain for St.Michael's and All Angels so that it doesn't have to piggyback on mavarin.com any more. Don't rush to find it, though. It's not there yet. The automated email I got a minute or so ago says:

While your hosting account is now active, it typically takes between 24-48 hours before your hosting account is ready for you to upload your Web site.

Oh, good. I just spent two or three hours navigating all those screens, choosing the right available version of the screen name Father Smith and I agreed upon, accepting some services and passing on others, registering the Whosis stuff, unlocking the account, setting up the email, and finally updating several key web pages so I'd have something to upload. Now it turns out I can't upload anything yet. Phooey. I wanted something more than a handful of automated emails to show for all this work!

The other thing I did tonight, aside from chatting with friends, updating last night's entry and writing capsule reviews of Beatles films on flixster.com, was research where the heck we're going this weekend to celebrate the Big Five-Oh. John doesn't want to spend the whole weekend driving to and from somewhere (can't blame him for that!), so we're pretty much limited to Arizona, or maybe a little way into NM or Southern Cal. The condition I've placed on it is it's got to be someplace I've never been, doing something I've never done. The choices at the moment seem to be more or less as follows:

• The Verde Canyon Railroad - billed as "the finest train ride in Arizona" and "Arizona’s longest-running nature show." I was hoping it was a steam locomotive, but the photo shows a rather pretty diesel engine - turquoise, of course.
  
• Bisbee, AZ - the hilly home of a huge spiral shaped open pit mine in the middle of town - and yes, there are tours. The Copper Queen Hotel is historic, almost legendary, but there's another set of lodgings that's even more compelling: the Shady Dell, where you stay in a retro-themed bus or trailer. Haven't checked yet whether the Tiki bus is available. Bisbee isn't too far from Tombstone, so we could conceivably run down there and see the World's Largest Rosebush, and check whether the little figure of Virgil Earp still falls over with an audible clack at the Historama. Tombstone itself can't be the main destination, because we've been there at least twice before (see photo).
  
• Roswell, NM - John may decide it's out of reach for this weekend, but it's hard to resist the allure of two alien contact museums, Alien Resistance HQ and tacky souvenirs.
• Tiki tour of Funky Phoenix - I've been to Phoenix lots of times, but I haven't been to Trader Vic's (new, unfortunately), Mystery Castle, a reputed 1947 UFO crash site (but a lot closer than Roswell), a huge high-tech spire designed by Frank Lloyd Wright decades ago but only just built a couple years ago, the Hall of Flame, the Confederate Air Force Museum, and Organ Stop Pizza, where you can listen to a theatre Wurlitzer organ while munching your mushrooms and extra cheese.
• Palm Springs - Frank Sinatra had a home there, recently restored but probably not open to the public. There's a restored Tiki hotel and lounge, the Caliente Tropics Resort, and a Hawaiian furniture store, and Toucans Tiki Lounge. We've never stopped for more than gas or a burger, except for the time Teresa and I took a cab to the airport there when my Mercury Capri died. So it counts as someplace new - sort of.
  

John, if you have alternate suggestions, today's the last day to make them! That goes for the rest of you as well.

Karen